Create-A-Sim part 1

The first customization you will get familiar with comes with CaSIE. By using CaSIE you are able to edit the appearance of your skin at all five (toddler, child, teen, mature and elder) age stages and then save/import/export it as a "Sim package" that you either use yourself, or upload to for example TSR for others to use. Expect to see lifestyle packages built around famous personalities in a near future! The customization involves changing the hair styles/colors, the choice of clothing (split up into top and bottom appearance which can be mixed indefinately), the use of peripherals (such as hats or glasses), the use of make-up (including the mimic) and the way you want your face mesh to appear. You have hundreds of sliders you can drag to change and mix the way for example your eyebrows, your nose, your cheeks, your forehead etc will appear - the only limit in this area is your imagination. Available for you to decide for all five ages is also five different types of clothing: casual, formal, underwear, swimsuit and pyjamas. You can imagine these files will be large and yeah, you are right. They will be VERY large, much depending on how much customization you've done to all stages in life - you are free to only edit the stages you are interested in of course (dont forget aging can be turned off in the game). As far as skinning goes you are in for a treat. As said previously you are able to edit the top clothing and bottom clothing (which incorporate shoes) in any way you want. But you are also able to edit the hair, the facial hair, the make-up and anything else that uses textures to change their appearance. To edit a texture you simply choose the part of your Sim you want to edit (in this example we choose to edit the top appearance) and then you click on "export texture". This now allows you to select a name for the new texture and then it will be added to a specific folder on your system. Now open up your favourite editing tool (photoshop is mine) and locate/open up the file. The clothing files will look similar to the current skin files, with the exception there are no longer any skin colors in them, just a large black area. Now simply make changes to the top clothing, merge all layers and save your file. If you go back into CaSIE and have a look at your skin, it will automatically change appearance according to your changes - how simple is that! You will also be able to change alpha channels (which allow for transparency) to remove parts of the clothing etc. In the works (as suggested by Steve) is also a way to capture a screenshot of the skin directly within CaSIE on a transparent background, certainly making life easier for you all. Now something to keep in mind is that you need to create a new skin for each age stage (that means five skins in total to cover them all), unless you specify an age group for those with aging turned off. Look at this as similar to supporting (or not supporting) all three skin tones as it is in Sims 1 now. You also need to keep in mind that you are only changing the appearance of one type of clothing (out of five in total), for example your Sim's formal wear appearance but not the others. To cover all five age groups and all five appearances you'd need to create 21 skins in total (toddler only has one choice) - whoah! These whole packages will be HUGE. Thus it is my belief that a lot of skinning will be made for specific age groups and specific appearances - after all you can choose and mix them all in any way you want and then package it as your own Sim. The same type of skinning can be done for facial hair, make-up and everything else editable through a texture. Not to be overlooked is the fact that your mesh (face) editing can also be packaged and submitted, so expect to see lots of elf, dwarf, alien etc in a near future. Here at TSR we will fully support both 21 set packages as well as specified skins and mesh changes. We will be sure to make the file navigation very detailed for ease of use. Once your Sim is packaged and put into the game you will see all your choices appear as your Sim ages. You will be able to change the settings through a lite version of CaSIE built into the game at any time while you are playing, so no worries about being stuck with changes you dont like. You will also be able to download new clothing directly in the game and see how it looks on your Sim instantly. To summarize, Maxis have made sure you dont need to be a rocket science to change the appearance of your Sims and make it look good. More to come shortly about CaSIE!